Bhoe: Govt in hard place over Venezuela fuel matter

Member of Parliament for Caroni Central, Dr. Bhoendradatt Tewarie, MP, moving a Motion calling on the Government to consider the Opposition Leader's proposals of an Economic Master Plan.

Office of the Parliament

Gail Alexan­der

The Row­ley ad­min­is­tra­tion has found it­self be­tween a rock and a hard place be­cause of the dif­fi­cul­ty of es­tab­lish­ing truth­ful­ness sur­round­ing the March meet­ing with the Venezue­lan Vice Pres­i­dent - and be­cause of con­tro­ver­sy con­cern­ing the fi­nal des­ti­na­tion of fu­el sold by Paria Trad­ing Com­pa­ny to Aru­ba.

So said UNC MP Bhoe Tewarie in Par­lia­ment yes­ter­day. He was pi­lot­ing a mo­tion call­ing for Gov­ern­ment to favourably con­sid­er the Op­po­si­tion Leader’s pro­pos­als for an Eco­nom­ic Mas­ter Plan and fa­cil­i­tate gen­uine bi­par­ti­san col­lab­o­ra­tion, to­wards a na­tion­al re­cov­ery pol­i­cy.

Since fil­ing the mo­tion on May 9th, Tewarie said events have over­tak­en TT, “Robert Le Hunte is no longer Pub­lic Util­i­ties Min­is­ter and no longer Vice-Chair of the Road Map Com­mit­tee.

“The con­tro­ver­sial vis­it of Venezue­lan Vice pres­i­dent Del­cy Ro­driguez, and her en­tourage and the equal­ly con­tro­ver­sial sale of fu­el by Paria Ltd, which have be­come mat­ters of in­ter­na­tion­al spec­u­la­tion and con­tro­ver­sy, which have led to dis­put­ed state­ments by the Prime Min­is­ter and Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty which seem to bor­der on self-in­crim­i­na­tion. They have made this gov­ern­ment weak at the knees.”

Tewarie said giv­en be­cause of up­com­ing elec­tions, the Road Map Com­mit­tee doc­u­ment’s cred­i­bil­i­ty as a non-par­ti­san, stake­hold­er guid­ed doc­u­ment of na­tion­al con­sen­sus “has been se­vere­ly un­der­mined and can be hot­ly con­test­ed."

“So Gov­ern­ment by its own reck­less ac­tions has served to un­der­mine any good in­ten­tions it may have had. It has ren­dered any pro­pos­al for a re­cov­ery plan, sus­pect,” he said adding re­cov­ery can­not and will not hap­pen.

“The fact is that, where we find our­selves to­day makes it very dif­fi­cult for the gov­ern­ment to ex­er­cise any moral au­thor­i­ty what­so­ev­er in any­thing. It makes it very dif­fi­cult for them to sum­mon any cred­i­bil­i­ty, for them to elic­it any re­cep­tiv­i­ty from the pop­u­la­tion or to en­gen­der any trust from the vast ma­jor­i­ty of cit­i­zens.”

“On Sep­tem­ber 7th 2020, the Kei­th Row­ley gov­ern­ment will have had five years in of­fice- they have been dread years. Eigh­teen con­sec­u­tive quar­ters of eco­nom­ic de­cline up to De­cem­ber 2019. Four and a half years of re­ces­sion yield­ing a de­pres­sion.“

”Busi­ness knew it. The mid­dle class felt it. The poor and the vul­ner­a­ble lived it and tried to sur­vive it.....The pre-COVID nor­mal was hor­ri­ble and un­de­sir­able. Then came COVID 19. And every vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty was sud­den­ly ex­posed. The prospects for TT are not good go­ing for­ward un­der this gov­ern­ment.“

Tewarie said Gov­ern­ment gives much in­for­ma­tion on the amount of re­lief mon­ey be­ing spent, ”But we hard­ly get re­al num­bers about ac­tu­al peo­ple reached and ben­e­fit­ting from these grants. We don’t know the reach or im­pact but we have a rea­son to be­lieve it’s not good.“

”Some cards for salary re­lief didn’t work at the ATMs. Some peo­ple who had food cards in couldn’t have their pay­ment processed at the gro­cery."